“I am not a great expert in the tender passion, Miss Sheldon, but I am quite prepared to believe real love comes but once in a lifetime to either man or woman. Well, now, I am much obliged to you for telling me what you have done, and I am glad you told me. For the present we will keep it to ourselves. But I think you had better face the fact that, sooner or later, Mr. Morrice will have to be told by one of us.” When the girl had left, Lane indulged in a long fit of meditation. Yes, Morrice had better know this at once. He could probably invent more than one plan by which Rosabelle could be kept out of it, even if he approached him directly. But Lane had gauged the financier sufficiently to know that in some respects he was a very peculiar man. He might resent the detective’s interference in what he considered a purely private matter, and order him out of the house. He would adopt a method which he had used more than once before when he did not wish to appear personally. He went to a small typewriter which he only used on special occasions; his usual one had a personality of its own which might be easily identified, for certain typewriting is sometimes as distinctive as handwriting. He indited a brief epistle and addressed it to “Rupert Morrice, Esquire,” taking care to mark it “Private.” He would take it down to the City and post it there, thus avoiding the tell-tale West End postmark. It was an anonymous letter, signed by “A Well-wisher.” “If that doesn’t stir him to some sort of action, we must think of something else,” so ran the reflections of this astute man. “It may precipitate an explosion, and amongst other things reveal to him that Mr. Archie Brookes is no more his wife’s nephew than I am.” He walked away from the pillar-box in the City well pleased with himself. It could not be said that he felt any compunction with regard to Mrs. Morrice _née_ Miss Lettice Larchester. She had, no doubt, married the man for his money, and was treating him very badly. But even if he had, his hand would not have been stayed in consequence. His first duty was to his clients. CHAPTER XVI AT SCOTLAND YARD Dismissing from his mind for the moment the incident which Rosabelle Sheldon had made a special visit to communicate to him—the anonymous letter would put in train the machinery for elucidating the real facts of that—there were two pressing problems that Lane was anxious to solve without any undue delay. The one was the actual position of Sir George Clayton-Brookes. Was he a comparatively poor man, as his paying-in book went to prove; or a rich one, as his lavish expenditure in certain directions tended to show? The second problem was the real identity of the young man calling himself his nephew, and also passing as the nephew of Mrs. Morrice by the marriage of her sister to the brother of the mysterious baronet.